More people are making Alberta a holiday destination or looking for leisurely activities closer to home, and that puts Cochrane in an advantegous position.

A tourism strategy is in the works for Cochrane and aims to help unleash that potential and is expected to be presented to town council in the fall.

Cochrane Economic Development is the the midst of doing groundwork for the strategy. It has been gathering input from stakeholders and a June 7 tourism workshop will further expand upon those discussions. The result will be a course of action that should take Cochrane through the next three to five years.

Economic Development manager Mike Korman says the thurst follows in the steps of what was identified as a sector that has potential for growth in the town's 2013 economic development strategy.

"It's an opportunity to give Cochrane a way forward as to what we should be focusing on from a tourism perspective, take inventory of what we would consider tourism products in town and really map out what we believe people come here for and potentially where the gaps exist," he explains. "We want to plot out a course for the next three to five years as to what we really should be focusing on as tourism becomes a bigger part of the regional play within Alberta."

Tourism in Cochrane rotates around the private sector and nonprofit organizations that offer tourism products, explains Korman, pointing to such events as the Labour Day Weekend rodeo and Cochrane Light Up undertaken by nonprofit organizations and those of private sector tourism powerhouse MacKay's Ice Cream and other budding initiatives, like brewery tours.

"We want to understand is if there are opportunties for more products to be created, who should be doing it and why and really focus on it from an economic development standpoint," says Korman.

The upcoming workshop will allow stakeholders to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) impacting the industry, a common strategy tool.

Fall is a shoulder season for tourism and having the strategy completed by then will help prepare the town for the 2018 season.

"We really want to ramp up for 2018, to have a good strategy moving forward and to put some things in place to be ready for that 2018 high tourism season."

The tourism sector has been seeing real growth and strength across Canada and Cochrane is no different. Korman believes it will only get better as the economy improves.

"We are seeing as Calgary and the region grows we not only have people who come to stay overnight, but more day trippers. With the Alberta economy being a little bit slower we see families coming out for the day, enjoying our parks by the river and the Ranch and taking in some sort of activities, whether it's food or otherwise, in our downtown core, not just in our historical downtown area but in our 5th Ave. shopping areas and the Quarry.

The national parks continue to be a magnet for visitors to the province, especially the mountain parks. Data from the Alberta Tourism Market Monitor indicates the province’s national parks experienced record visitation in 2016. Banff had about four million visitors, up by 4.7 per cent from 2015, and even more are anticipated this year with Canada 150 celebrations and the free 2017 national park passes available to all Canadians.